How to do magic tricks #6: Where and how do I begin?

If you are doing card magic or coin magic, there are many sleights that you need to master before you could progress to the more professional magic tricks respectively. If you were to wait for yourself to perfect these sleights, you would have probably lost interest or given up magic by then. I would then suggest that you do the following while you spend time privately to master the necessary sleights over a period of time.

Start with some gimmicks. You can get a variety of magical gimmicks either from your local magic shops or purchase them from online magic shops. From gimmicks, you may want to progress on to self-working magic tricks using playing cards. Self-working tricks as the name implies are magic tricks where their effects happen naturally when you follow the procedures of the performance routines accordingly. Self-working magic tricks require little or no sleight of hands at all and are therefore relatively manageable.

Generally, professional magic tricks using playing cards or coins require many sleights that take a lifetime to master. Mentalism magic (mind reading) generally require relatively less sleights (or in fact none at all) as compared to card magic and coin magic. So you may want to begin with mentalism first instead of other types of magic such as card magic or coin magic.

For your personal education in magic, I would recommend that you watch the World’s Greatest Magic DVD series. Each World’s Greatest Magic DVD series features a particular magic trick performed by different magicians with their individual style of presentation. From watching these different presentations, they would enrich your experience with magic. That is the basis of how we learn and become an expert in any subject in any field – with continued exposure to the same thing, experiencing them again in a variety of ways.

How to do magic tricks #5: Items used in magic

In stage magic, there are standard routines performed by stage magicians which we are familiar with as children watching magic show on television. In the field of stage magic, only the more exceptional magicians are able to present more innovative routines which the general public is less exposed to; or they could present a standard routine in a more entertaining manner. This is due to the fact that the props of stage magicians are pretty standard just as what we have been regularly exposed to. These are pigeons, rabbits, playing cards, guillotine, hat, custom made boxes for assistants to be locked up in, magic wands, silks, rings, etc. As many props for stage magic are relatively big as they are needed to be presented from the stage to audience seated a distance away, they are pretty expensive to purchase. Thus amateur magicians may find it financially difficult to get more expensive props to incorporate into their repertoire and this is apart from the cost of learning the secrets to performing them.

If you have watched David Copperfield’s performance, you would have noticed that he is able to perform very simple and standard routines interwoven into a dance with a storyline in it. David Copperfield is able to inject entertainment into his performance that makes his show more interesting than an amateur magician who merely performs the standard routines as performed by many other magicians.
My brief discussion on stage magic is to show that items used in stage magic is standard stage props which we would not be using. What I would like to focus on here are items used in close-up magic. Close-up magic is more relevant to the non-professional magicians (since we are only interested in amusing our friends and ourselves) whether you are just a hobbyist or someone who intend to pursue magic as a profession in the future. The most common objects used are:

1. Playing Cards
2. Coins
3. Balls and Cups
4. Sponge Balls
5. Rubber Bands
6. Ropes
7. Silks
8. ESP Cards
9. Business Cards (Name Cards)
10. Money
11. Handkerchief
12. Cutleries from dining tables
13. Almost any objects around you.

Amazing Tricks w/ Everyday Objects - DVD

Among these items, playing cards and coins are among the most common followed by sponge balls, rubber bands. Many close-up magicians are dedicated particularly in the field of card magic and coin magic and the magic tricks devised for playing cards and coins accumulated since early 20th century are numerous and so are the sleights involved in these two types of magic. ESP Cards are more commonly used by mentalists (mind reading magicians) and magic tricks involving the use of ESP cards can be modified and replaced by normal playing cards generally.

How to do magic tricks #4: Why do people want to learn magic?

People learn magic for different purposes. The basic motivation for learning magic is that magic amazes and intrigues other people and ourselves. If you perform a magic trick to your friend, the usual response you get is “how did you do it?” The first motive of that response is to satisfy a curiosity. After you have shared the secret to the magic trick you performed to your friend (which you shouldn’t), he/she may or may not choose to learn how to perform it. This is where I draw the distinction between a curiosity seeker and one who is interested in magic. The one who chooses not to learn the magic trick after knowing the secret is merely a curiosity seeker. The one who chooses to learn it wants to perform it in order to amaze and intrigue others just as much as he was amazed and intrigued. Taking that even a step further, each one has one or more of the following motives:

1. a natural passion for magic especially developed since childhood;
2. to become a professional magician in order to learn a living;
3. to entertain family and friends;
4. to impress ladies.

The last three reasons are extrinsically motivated while the first is one is intrinsically motivated. Humans generally want to possess power beyond their physical abilities. Being able to perform magic not only gives the audience the impression but also satisfies the performer’s imagination that he/she possesses some supernatural powers beyond his/her natural self.

How to do magic tricks #3: The Prestige (a movie)

If you are interested in learning how to do magic tricks, you must watch the movie “The Prestige” directed by Christopher Nolan which was released in 2006 over and over again. The story is about two magicians, “The Professor” Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and “The Great Danton” Rupert Angier (Hugh Jackman) who turned from friends to rivals. Each would try to uncover the secrets of the other magic tricks and sabotaged the rival’s performance and to outperformed the rival at the same time.

In this movie, you will be told what kind of attitude magicians should have and the price and value behind every magic tricks. After watching a old Chinese magician performance, Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) learned that to perfect the art of magic is to dedicate one’s life totally to the art of magic. The old Chinese magician would hide a fish bowl between his legs as he wobbled to-and-fro on stage and made a fish bowl appear on the table as he covered the table top with a piece of cloth. To hide the fact that he was hiding a fish bowl between his legs, he would wobble daily even when he was not performing.

This subsequently led Alfred Borden to share his life with his twin brother alternatively as one same person. In that way, the twin would act conveniently as the other person’s double which he used in his act, “the transported man”. In order to protect that secret, he was willing to sacrifice the sanity of his wife as they exchange identities with each other from time to time confusing the wife as she found her husband to love her on a certain day and not love her on another. He went as far as severing the fingers of the twin brother when one of them had lost his fingers.

On the other hand, Rupert Angier would stop at nothing to uncover Alfred’s secrets to his act. He would send his lady assistant who loved him to live with Alfred to steal his secrets as well as spend all his money traveling to meet Tesla (Thomas Edison’s rival as an inventor) to buy his ‘transportation machine’ which turned out to be a ‘cloning machine’.

In an earlier scene where Alfred was courting the lady who subsequently became his wife, he performed a coin trick to the lady’s nephew. After his performance, he whispered to the boy, “Never reveal the secret! They will beg you and flatter you but when you reveal the secret, you are nothing to them. The trick you used to fool everyone is everything.”

How to do magic tricks #2: Where to learn magic?

With the proliferation of the internet and online video from YouTube, many people have been uploading the secrets to magic tricks on the internet. As a result, many people have searched the internet for secrets to magic tricks. Among these people who surf the net for secrets to magic tricks, many of whom are merely curiosity seekers. Secrets to magic tricks should never be revealed to curiosity seekers because the secrets are not meant for them. Curiosity seekers merely cheapen the value of magic tricks. They will even go round exposing the secret to everybody, destroying totally the trick that was designed and crafted to entertain everyone.

So one obvious way where you can learn magic is from the internet. If you have found your way to this website, you would have already been surfing the internet in search of magic. Nevertheless, is that the only way you want to learn magic? It is not true to say that nothing comes free. However, things that come free and easy are usually not of much value, at least the people who receive them do not esteem them highly. Moreover, do you really want to perform magic tricks where the secrets are already made known to many other people who have learned about them from the internet? Instead of amazing others you will probably get the response, “I know that too! What is so amazing about that?”

The other common and easy way to learn magic tricks is to learn from a ‘magician’. This can be done by visiting your local magic shops and buy a magic trick from the shop if they provide that kind of service. Besides that, you may be fortunate or perhaps unfortunate enough to meet a ‘so-called magician’ who is willing to teach you magic tricks personally for a fee. I do believe in the benefit of having someone who is experienced in the craft of magic to guide you personally step by step. However not just anyone who claims to be a magician is truly a proficient magician. Even if they are, they may not necessarily be good teachers who know how to guide you. My biggest objection to learning from such ‘magicians’ is that the fees that they charge for teaching you are too unreasonable. In my early days of learning magic, I have personally paid as much as $100 for a magic trick which I find too unpractical to execute after learning its secret and have also paid several hundreds of dollars for just one or two hours of personal tuition for learning magic. The length of time is too short for you to master any difficult moves (called sleight of hands). You may want to learn these basic sleights and practice them on your own for a reasonable length of time and return to that person and ask for more guidance to perfect your moves. However that is not the deal you are getting. You certainly do not want to pay several hundreds of dollars and sit there for two hours practicing a particular move. In case you are thinking that you just want to learn a few simple tricks in that one or two hours instead of learning some difficult moves, then you might as well spend ten to twenty dollars buying a book and learn more than a dozen magic tricks in them. If you want something more visual, buy a DVD and watch it. And that brings me to my next point.

Having addressed the issue of free magic tricks on the internet, the most common avenues to learn magic nowadays is from books and videos in the form of DVDs. Although some magic books may be expensive, but there are also many magic books that are very cheap, costing less than $10.00. In fact you can find books that teach you as many as 50 magic tricks or more for an affordable price of less than $10.00. If you are serious about learning magic, you should consider investing some money into books. If you do not have much cash to spare, just get a book which you can afford. You will find that you need a considerable length of time just to master every single trick taught in the book.

In this modern era where videos are available in abundance, DVDs have become the media of choice particularly it stimulates both your visual and auditory senses. As a result, secrets to magic tricks are released in the form of DVDs more than they are released in the form of books. DVDs certainly have the edge over books. You can learn magic tricks from DVDs visually as well as replay them over and over again.

Nevertheless, there are several drawbacks if you compare DVDs with books. DVDs are commercial media produced for commercial purposes and so they are relatively more expensive than books in terms of value. If you buy a book on magic with the same price of a DVD, you would have access to many more magic tricks than you would from a DVD. Since DVD is the media of choice, whatever magic tricks you learn from the DVD are also known to many other people who have bought the same DVD as you have. It is easy to watch every magic tricks presented in a DVD but it is not easy to read and learn every magic tricks in a book. So the secrets to the magic tricks found on DVD are not as exclusive as those magic tricks found in books on magic. In fact, there were premium magic tricks that were usually released in the form of books first before they were released on DVDs. Magic tricks that are taught in DVDs are usually taken from books that were published long ago. Professional magician Michael Close says in his DVD that he is an old school magician in that he believes in learning magic from books on magic instead of from DVDs. He explained that magic books explain more clearly on many subtleties of a magic trick needed for learning whereas DVDs do not. Another local magician I met told me that the really good magic tricks are found in books and not in DVDs because magicians write books to leave behind a legacy. It is understandable that it requires time and effort to read and understand from books on magic but the real gems are buried deep within the book. So if you want to find real gems for magic, you will have to dig for it from the books.